Wowza, what a weekend! Mr. Picky Pincher was out for half the Weekend on a work trip, so I was left to my own devices in the kitchen (of course). Here’s how we spent our weekend; share yours in the comments!

Thrifting Adventures

It was a great weekend on the thrift store front. I went through our house and purged a few items and donated to Goodwill. It feels nice doing a tad of decluttering.

We also swung by another thrift store to pick up a bowl for our Halloween candy. Last year we passed it out in a grocery bag and it was a little depressing. Anyhoo, we got a few goodies on sale while checking out the thrift store.

My stemless wine glass broke earlier this week. I only bought it for $1 at HEB years ago, but it was my favorite glass. I’m a little clumsy and can’t be trusted with actual stemware.

Fortunately for me, our local thrift store sells glasses for .49 apiece. I snagged this snazzy stemless glass and all is well once again in the land of wine.

I also got a very cute dish to pass out our Halloween candy. Normally I wouldn’t bother with a single-use, specific kind of item, but since I love Halloween SO MUCH, I made an exception. We filled it with our couponed Halloween candy and had to store it very high up in the cabinets.

I, uh, can’t be trusted not to eat the candy before October 31.

No shame.

I also found a collection of cookie cutters that I couldn’t say no to. For $2 I got a lot of neat ones, including a giant gingerbread man. These normally go for $1 – $2 apiece, so it was a great score. Now I can get a little more creative with my cookie baking. Gingerbread cookies are SO happening in our home for Christmas.

Cooking

It was a fantastic weekend for cooking a few new things around the house, which was refreshing.

Ricotta

We’re making a lasagna dish this week that calls for ricotta cheese. I was about to put ricotta on the grocery list until I realized we had a quart of milk that was about to go bad.

I brought the milk to a boil in a large pot and stirred in three tablespoons of lemon juice. After stirring for a few minutes, I had ricotta! I strained the cheese in cheesecloth for an hour and then stored it in the fridge for later. Waste not!

Here’s the ricotta strained and ready for lasagna! No extra cost required.

Granola

I used this recipe to make some cute little granola cups for breakfast this week. You plate the granola cups filled with yogurt and top them with sliced fruit. It’s quite tasty and refreshing!

I also made a batch of butter pecan granola, using our homemade raisins. I love finding new purposes for food that’s about to spoil! It’s awesome for the food budget, y’all.

Poached egg

I wanted to brag really quickly about a culinary milestone I reached this weekend. On Sunday morning I wanted a nice ‘n’ fancy breakfast. I decided to make a lighter version of an eggs benedict without hollandaise sauce. I successfully poached an egg for the first time and it was pretty good! It was a little under done for my tastes, but I know I can successfully poach eggs now.

I paired the poached egg with a toasted English muffin, Dijon mustard, ham, and a sprinkling of lemon pepper seasoning. It was vinegary, salty, and delicious without the butter-heavy hollandaise sauce.

I love me some hollandaise, but I don’t love how heavy it is in calories. This is a great alternative.

Dried fruits

On Friday evening I noticed we had strawberries, bananas, and blueberries that were about to go bad. I’m trying to be better about food waste, so I got a little creative. I sliced the fruit and stuck it in our fancypants dehydrator. 

It was  a resounding success! We now have lots of dried fruit on hand, which we plan to use making homemade oatmeal packets.

Yogurt

I made a batch of my homemade yogurt this weekend. We were low on yogurt, but I mostly fermented some so I could use the whey for some fun projects!

Soaked wheat bread

Reader JD recommended this awesome soaked wheat bread recipe, and I had to try it. When I started I didn’t realize the flour needs to soak for 12 – 24 hours. I’ll let it soak for the rest of the weekend and then start baking bread loaves on Monday. I’ll let you know how it turns out! It looks utterly divine.

Mysost

Another reader, Ushuaia, recommended mysost as a way to use, well, whey. Mysost is a funky little thing; it’s a Norwegian cheese made from caramelized whey and cream. I haphazardly followed this recipe, cooking the mysost in, like, 3 hours instead of 15. Because $% directions, right?

Anyhoo, this was a weird one. I could see how it could be appealing, but the tanginess was too much for me, even when I paired the cheese with crackers. Oh well! I’m still glad I tried to put it to good use instead of dumping the whey.

Pumpkinnnnnnnn

Oh I am SO HAPPY it’s Pumpkin season, y’all. I LOVE eating roasted pumpkin, but it’s impossible to come across fresh pumpkin during the other seasons of the year. Our grocery store sent us a coupon for $2 off any $5 purchase of pumpkins. Naturally that meant I was going home with a lot of pumpkin.

I perused the pumpkin selection and realized that the small pumpkins were the same cost as the huge pumpkins at $3 apiece. Naturally I bought two behemoth pumpkins to get more bang for my buck.

Y’all.

I totally forgot what a pain it is to break down fresh pumpkins. It took me an hour to take on one pumpkin. I set the second pumpkin on our porch as a decoration, but really it was because I didn’t want to see another pumpkin ever again.

And holy moly! This pumpkin was huge. I somehow managed to dice it and roast it. I had to put our double-oven to use to get this sucker fully cooked. Once I roasted the pumpkin, I allowed it to cool before storing portions in the fridge (for dinner this week) and freezer.

Wine about it!

I’ve been mashing the base for our homemade plum wine all week. We strained the mash on Sunday night and now we’ll let it ferment for one month. Can’t wait to see what this plum wine tastes like! We sampled it and it’s definitely going to be a drier, more subtle wine.

DIY pore strip

On Sunday morning I woke up and found lots of blackheads on my nose. Ugh! I searched the house for pore strips, but realized I haven’t bought them since I was, like, 17. I remembered seeing a Pinterest hack where people were making their own pore strips, so I decided to give it a go. I used this easy guide and it actually worked!

I combined one packet of unflavored, unsweetened gelatin with an equal part of milk. I heated it briefly in the microwave, stirred it, and slapped that shiz on my face. It does take a bit to dry, and you don’t need to put a thick layer on your face for it to work.

This stuff comes off in thin sheets, but it definitely pulls out blackheads. As an added bonus, it removed lots of dead skin and made my skin feel fresh. I’ll definitely be doing this again!

I was going to take a pic of the mixture on my face, but uh, it looks like snot. So no picture!

Free breakfast!

Mr. Picky Pincher was at a work conference through Saturday afternoon, so I was on my own for Saturday breakfast. I was going to cook something simple at home until I remembered I had a coupon for a free Chikfila breakfast item.

I snagged a free chicken biscuit for breakfast, which was awesome! I brought along my water bottle to save the restaurant some cash while preventing plastic waste. 

DIY car detailing

Since Mr. Picky Pincher was out of town, I wanted to do something nice for him. I decided to wash our car and do a light detailing on the inside. I scrubbed the car down with an inside-out t-shirt and a mixture of Dawn and water. Then I hosed it off with the water hose.

After washing the outside, I used our Shop-Vac to vacuum the floors and mats. We had some Armor All under the sink, so I used that to give a nice sheen to the car’s interior.

I wish I were able to give the seats a good steam cleaning, but it was nice having a clean car. It was even nicer not having to pay anything for it, too!

Garden update

Wow, garden season again already, huh? A few weeks ago Mr. Picky Pincher started the seeds for our fall garden. As you can see, they’re coming up like crazy!

This top planter holds our spaghetti squash, pumpkin, and butternut squash seedlings. I hope it’ll be a squash-tastic fall!

Sunday Funday

I used to be an absolute chicken when it came to scary movies, but I’ve grown to love them over the years. Mr. Picky Pincher and I were THRILLED and excited to see the new It movie. We’d seen the old version from the 90s and were looking forward to the new version.

We got to the theater a little too early to be seated, so we checked out a local Vietnamese bakery. I’m a sucker for any patisserie, so we snagged an assortment of macarons and an eclair.

The macaron flavors were lavender, green tea, Earl grey, pistachio, yuzu, and taro. Unfortunately, the flavors were the only good thing about these macarons. The texture was completely off and the bake on them was just not great. At $2 apiece, you can imagine how ticked I was.

The valuable lesson here was that yes, I’m not a perfect baker, but I can cook damn good treats at home. There’s no need to spend $2+ on bad macarons once you know how to make decent ones. And the eclair was old, too, which was a downer. Oh well! I’m glad we gave it a try.

And It was awesome, by the way. I didn’t find it scary; to me it was more disturbing than anything else.

DIY bang trim

My grown-out bangs have been annoying me lately. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to trim them or let them grow out, but ugh! They kept poking me in the eye, so I decided to give them a trim.

I did a quick trim using the below YouTube tutorial. It’s my goal to learn how to trim the rest of my hair too!

Zap’s adventures

Oh you guys! Zap has started hunting little animals in our yard.

Earlier this week he had an intense stare-down with a squirrel. I thought it was cute and paid it no mind, until Zap ran after the squirrel to kick his ass. I shrieked, trying to stop Zap from getting attacked by a squirrel (their bites are bad!), and ran out to the back yard. There was Zap, clinging to a tree, with a barking squirrel right overhead. Zap HATES climbing trees because they’re rough on his paws (he’s a delicate flower), so he let go and tumbled from the tree. He’s okay and the squirrel is okay, but wow.

Anyhoo, chasing critters gets exhausting. Time for cuddles with mama.

I was having a hard time at work on Friday. I took my customary lunchtime nap and Zap joined me. I got up to return to work, but he made it so much harder with this angelic face.

I gave Zap catnip on Sunday and… he was a fan.

We want to know: How did you spend or save money this weekend?

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